Gail Godwin - Unfinished Desires: A Novel

G AIL G ODWIN is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholys Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 19611963, the first two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. She lives in Woodstock, New York. Visit the authors website at www.gailgodwin.com.

CHAPTER 1
Tour of the Grounds

Third Saturday in August 1951
Mount St. Gabriels
Mountain City, North Carolina

WHEN YOUVE DONE as much girl-watching as I have, Mother Malloy, you can see even as theyre coming up through the lower grades how each class reveals itself as an organism in its own right. Youre not too tired for a bit of a ramble, I hope.

Not at all, Mother Ravenel. Ive only been sitting on trains for two days.

Good, in that casethe headmistress, as quick of step as she was in speech, veered suddenly off the gravel walk and, snatching up her ankle-length skirts, plunged down a woodland pathwell take a turn around the new athletic field and then go up to the grotto and sit with the Red Nun awhile and have a little prayer to Our Lady in front of our Della Robbia.

Who is the Red Nun?

Without slowing her pace, the headmistress turned back to reward the new young teacher with an appreciative smile.

You know, I often still catch myself thinking of her as a who. After all these years! The shortest way to put it is, shes our mascot. If you can rightly call a six-foot-high ton of red marble a mascot. Shes been unfinished since the middle of the First World War. Its quite a story, and you know what? Im going to save it until were at the grotto. There are so many things I want to point out to you first. Now, where was I?

You were saying aboutorganisms?

Oh, yes. A class is never just a collection of individual girls, though it is certainly that, too, when youre considering one girl at a time. But a class as a whole develops a group consciousness. Its an organic unit, with its own special properties. While were having our walk, I will tell you a little about your ninth-grade girls, the upcoming freshman class. They are a challenging group, those girls. They will require control.

As aan organism, you mean? Orsome ones in particular?

Both, Mother Malloy.

In the presence of the headmistress, Mother Malloy, who was by habit cool and exact in speech, found herself stumbling and blurting. From my responses so far, she thought, this voluble, assured woman must be wondering how I am going to take charge of any class, not to mention a challenging one that requires control. Mother Malloy was vexed by the clumsiness that had come over her even as she had been descending the steps of the train, taking caution with her long skirts, thanking the conductor who steadied her by the elbow, when a nun wearing aviators sunglasses shot forward to claim her. Mother Ravenel was a vigorously handsome woman of medium height, with a high-colored face and fine white teeth. Snappy phrases, bathed in southern drawl, assailed the young nun from Boston. Her hand was clapped firmly between Mother Ravenels immaculately gloved ones and she was mortified that she had not remembered to put on her own gloves.

There was worse to come. Mother Ravenel introduced her uniformed Negro driver and a lighter-skinned young man: This is Jovanwe call him our Angel of Transportationand this is his grandson Mark, who will be going off to college next year.

Mother Malloy extended her hand first to gray-haired Jovan, who took it after the merest hesitation. Though sensing she had done something outside of protocol, she had no choice but to repeat the gesture to young Mark, who, after a quick glance at his grandfather, shook her hand and bolted away to see to her trunk. While the two men loaded it into the back of the wood-paneled station wagon bearing the Mount St. Gabriels crest (the archangel with upturned palms floating protectively above mountain ranges), Mother Ravenel tipped her veiled head close to the new nuns and gently confided, We do things a little differently down here, Mother, but youll get used to our ways. I think youll find theres a great regard between the races and just as much loveif not actually more.

I have never seen a nun wearing sunglasses, Mother Malloy thought at the train station, trying to contain her mortification and offer it up.

Of course, girls in their early teens are always difficult, Mother Ravenel was saying now. She zigzagged off the woodland path and into a clearing. Do you have sisters, Mother?

I have never known a nun to dart about so, thought Mother Malloy, struggling to keep up with her guide. They taught us to glide and keep custody of the limbs in the Boston novitiate. Perhaps religious formation is another thing they do differently in the South. The accent is melodious, but somehow it doesnt lend itself to gravity.